


Darkest Heart

by Saucery



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amorality, Angst, Antagonism, Aphrodisiacs, Bisexual Character, Bisexuality, Consent Issues, Cross-Generation Relationship, DILFs, Daddy Issues, Daddy Kink, Dark, Dark Character, Desire, Dimension Travel, Dom/sub Undertones, Drama, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Dysfunctional Relationships, Episode Related, Father/Son Incest, Forbidden Love, Forced Orgasm, Fucked Up, Grief/Mourning, Gritty, Hate to Love, Horror, Hostile, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Control, Loss of Virginity, Lust, M/M, Monsters, Moral Dilemmas, Morally Ambiguous Character, Mutual Life-Saving, Near Death Experiences, Nemeton, Nogitsune, Not Technically Incest As They're Not Related In This World, Opposites Attract, Parallel Universes, Parent/Child Incest, Plotty, Pop Culture, Possessive Behavior, Potential Triggers, Power Imbalance, Pseudo-Incest, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rescue Missions, Road Trips, Romance, Sassy Stiles, Self-Denial, Sexual Tension, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Size Difference, Slow Burn, Snark, Stilinski Family Feels, Still Tagging It As Incest To Avoid Triggering Anyone, Supernatural Elements, Survivor Guilt, Taken By The Rift, Twisted and Fluffy Feelings, Underage Character(s), Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:12:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2562647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saucery/pseuds/Saucery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles travels to a world in which the sheriff never met Claudia, and never joined law enforcement. Instead, he became a darker version of himself—a paranoid, embittered hunter of supernatural creatures, whose adherence to the Code is sketchy, at best.</p><p>When John refuses to acknowledge Stiles as his son, will Stiles turn his back on the man who is no longer his father, or will he stay and try to show John a better way?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is inspired by the episode named “Alpha Pact” from the third season of _Teen Wolf_. [In that episode](http://teenwolf.wikia.com/wiki/Alpha_Pact), Stiles, Scott and Allison are drowned in water and put into a state of near-death in order to make a connection with the [Nemeton](http://teenwolf.wikia.com/wiki/Nemeton), a sacred, powerful tree that bridges the gap between this world and the next.
> 
> That’s where I’ve changed things. In my retelling, the Nemeton doesn’t just open the door to a world of darkness, but to other [quantum worlds](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation). Essentially, the Nemeton is an inter-dimensional rift. Either you go through the door to another world, or something from another world gets past the door and into yours.
> 
> In this AU, Stiles goes through. All the way through. Past death, and into a world where he was never born—a world where a lonely John Stilinski is without a family.
> 
> During the immersion, [Stiles clutches his dad’s badge](http://teenwolfwiki.com/Sheriff_Stilinski_s_badge), thinking desperately about how much his dad needs him, and how Stiles can’t afford to die as long as he’s needed. The Nemeton senses Stiles’s emotions and works its magic. So, when Stiles wakes up, it is in the world where John needs him the most... even if John doesn’t know it, yet.

* * *

“Art thou like me, child of my darkest heart?  
And dost thou think my untamed thoughts  
and speak my vast language?”  
— Kahlil Gibran.

* * *

 

Stiles had never died before, so he wasn’t entirely sure if the tingling in his limbs was normal. Technically, a dead guy shouldn’t be feeling anything, but technically, werewolves didn’t exist. So it wasn’t unreasonable to worry that he may have involuntarily joined the ranks of the undead. Stiles promised himself that even if he was a zombie, he’d be one with excellent taste. Only brains with IQs of over 150, for him.

Wait. That meant eating Lydia. Okay, so he’d be a zombie with terrible taste, instead. It would be logical if his taste for junk food followed him into the afterlife. What was the brain equivalent of curly fries?

Ugh, dirt. Dirt everywhere. Here dirt, there dirt, everywhere a—was that a _maggot_? That wriggly, squiggly critter under his bare foot? Panicking, Stiles scrabbled, and dislodged more dirt. This was ridiculous. He’d made wisecracks about hitting paydirt, once, but he hadn’t meant it literally.

On the plus side, he could move. Which proved that even if he was dead, he was animate. On the minus side, the zombie theory was looking more and more likely. Hopefully all this digging wouldn’t rip off his rotting arms. Stiles was fond of his appendages. Useless and flaily though they often were.

“Hello?” he croaked, when he emerged from… wherever he’d been. Nobody answered.

It was night-time, pitch-dark and spooky, with tall trees surrounding him like spindly skeletons. A breeze rustled through their branches, in eerie whispers that came and went, and the faint moonlight barely penetrated the canopy to touch the leafy floor. Stiles shivered, because his wet, muddy T-shirt and the freezing wind did not a happy combination make. If Stiles were that naive kid from a year ago who thought the dead were dead and that was all there was to it, he’d be reassured by his shivering, because it indicated he was alive.

But Stiles wasn’t that kid, anymore. He now knew that there were gradations of death, and that, just like the worst diseases, it had stages. The fortunate died completely and moved on, the not-so-fortunate got resurrected, and the unluckiest souls got stuck somewhere in-between.

Jesus fucking Christ, had Stiles died for real? Had Dad buried him with tears in his eyes? Had Scott given an emotional eulogy? Had Isaac made inappropriate jokes at Stiles’s funeral? Because that seemed like a thing Isaac would do.

Maybe Stiles hadn’t survived the ritual, and the Nemeton had killed him like it had killed so many others. Maybe the place Stiles had just crawled out of was his grave.

Except… this wasn’t a graveyard. And while Stiles knew he wasn’t, like, a hero, he did know he was loved, and loved enough to be buried with a tombstone.

He tripped over a tree-root and cursed. Five seconds later, he tripped over another root, and whipped around, glaring at the undergrowth that was plainly out to get him.

That was when he saw _it_.

Yeah. _It._ With italics, and everything.

Those tangled roots were attached to a stump. A huge, creepy-looking stump, like the sawn-off arm of a giant. (Nope. Not thinking about Derek. Or chainsaws.) The dim moonshine scarcely illuminated it, but Stiles knew the Nemeton when he saw it, not only because ordinary trees weren’t that bloody massive, but because ordinary trees didn’t exude that aura of… danger.

Suddenly hyper-aware that all he had between himself and painful evisceration was cold, soggy clothing, Stiles stumbled backward. His instincts where telling him to get away from that stump, but his feet weren’t cooperating with him, and it didn’t help that his soles kept getting poked by sticks and stones. They weren’t breaking his bones, but they hurt way more than words did. Stupid accurate idioms.

He’d made it about three meters from the Nemeton when somebody slammed into his back and took him down. He yelped, thrashing around, but he couldn’t get away. This close to the Nemeton, it was doubtless a supernatural creature, possibly a werewolf, and Stiles wasn’t prepared to volunteer himself for a maiming. Volunteering at soup kitchens was more meaningful and, incidentally, less fatal.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Don’t bite me!”

Whoever it was dragged him up by the collar and threw him against a tree, face-first, the bark scratching at his left cheek. He tried to turn slightly, to catch a glimpse of this newest threat to his life (afterlife?), but then there was the click of a trigger, and the cool barrel of a gun pressed to his nape.

Stiles froze.

Oh. It wasn’t a beast. It was a human.

Nonetheless, given the firepower, that wasn’t comforting.

Stiles drew a shuddering breath. “If you’re a serial killer, lemme just tell you that I’d make a terrible addition to your carcass collection. You’re more discerning than that. Trust me. You have more class than killing a teenager whose seventies’ porn DVDs are his most precious possessions.”

A hand began patting him down, ostensibly checking him for weapons. “Be. Quiet.”

Stiles startled, because that voice—it couldn’t be— “Dad?” he said, sagging in relief. “Don’t scare me like that!”

“I _said_ , be quiet.” The hand jerked him around, and before Stiles could speak, he had water splashed on him.

He spluttered. “Um, in case you can’t tell, I’m already wet? Dad?”

“Not a demon, then,” Dad said grimly, and Stiles… stared.

Something wasn’t right, here. There was a quality to Dad’s voice that Stiles hadn’t heard since Mom had passed on—a simmering, futile rage—and in the murky, moon-lit gloom, Dad’s features were rugged, too, leaner and harsher and more haggard, like he hadn’t been eating or sleeping properly for ages.

Stiles’s heart sank. “How long has it been?” he murmured, reaching out to touch Dad’s face, and Dad went still at the touch, as if shocked by it, before batting it away. “How long have I been gone?”

“What are you?” Dad demanded roughly, shifting the gun to Stiles’s temple. “I saw you clawing your way out of the ground near the Nemeton, so you can’t be human.”

“You know about the Nemeton?” Stiles blinked. “And whaddaya mean, what am I? I’m your son! Or is this some kinda sick prank? You’re always going on about me being more mature, but what about you? I get that you’re mad I went gallivanting off into the netherworld for an extended vacation, but I did it for _you_.”

“Don’t. Tempt me.” The gun dug even harder into Stiles’s skull, and Stiles winced. “I’m a split second from blasting a hole in your pretty little head, before bothering to figure out what you are. Your corpse will tell me that as easily as your mouth will.”

First of all—pretty? Secondly, what was this about corpses? “What happened to you?” Stiles said in exasperation. “You were all Batman about guns, before. And now you’re waving one around like a cowboy? Also, _you_ shouldn’t mess with _me_. I’m deeply offended by your lack of fatherly affection. I was hoping for a hug, at minimum. But what am I getting? More mean pranks!” Stiles jabbed a finger at his dad’s chest. “Enough’s enough, mister. You’re taking me home and feeding me chicken soup and fussing over me like you’re supposed to.”

“You’re a trickster spirit,” Dad decided, because he was either delusional or obsessed with playing this role to the hilt, or—

Crap. Could Stiles’s dad have forgotten him, somehow? A curse could do that. Or it might be a side effect of being spared by the Nemeton; it could have absorbed his dad’s memories and stopped short before absorbing his life-force, because of Stiles’s timely offering of himself as a sacrifice in his dad’s stead.

Even so, wouldn’t Scott and Mrs. McCall have done their best to reacquaint Dad with his past? Wouldn’t Dad have seen the photos of Stiles and Mom all over the house? Wouldn’t he have recognized Stiles as soon as he’d seen him?

Which meant—

Fuck. No. That couldn’t be. It couldn’t—

The more details Stiles took in, the more unnerved he became. Dad wore a scuffed leather jacket and combat boots, and if all that glinting from his hip was any indication, he was wearing some sort of belt with knives in it. And there was that tension he radiated, a readiness for violence that was palpable.

Stiles swayed on the spot, dizzy with disbelief.

“Dad,” he began, only to be interrupted.

“Don’t call yourself my son. My son died eighteen years ago.”

Stiles’s legs gave way, and he caught himself by grabbing his dad’s shoulder. “You’re not—but you have to be. Don’t you have that scar on your stomach from when you fell off a swing when you were three?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Dad hauled Stiles out of the clearing where the Nemeton stood, and toward an overgrown path that Stiles genuinely couldn’t remember ever seeing, before. The Jeep was parked at the end of it, thank god, _his_ Jeep, but…

It was the wrong color.

Yeah, it was vaguely grayish in the night, but it wasn’t the shade of gray Stiles was used to seeing. In broad daylight, this Jeep would probably be a brown, or at most a dull red.

“Oh, shit,” he said tremulously. “That ain’t blue.”

“Get in the goddamn car.” Dad shoved him into the passenger-side seat and—and _cuffed_ him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Stiles exclaimed, and the fact that his dad didn’t tell him to mind his language terrified him more than almost dying had. “You cuffed me?”

“Don’t try to escape.”

“I’m not going to run from _my own father_ , even if he’s turned into a psycho. Are you absolutely certain you don’t have that scar?”

“I don’t.”

“You still like bourbon, though, right? Especially Jim Beam Black?”

Dad paused, regarding him suspiciously.

“You do! Thank god. Or, er, not. You shouldn’t drink as much as you do. If you’re like my dad, which—” Stiles’s breathing hitched. “You aren’t. Not an awful lot.” Stiles’s hands began to tremble, making the cuffs clink, so he settled them on his knees, gripping tightly. “At least… tell me you’re John Stilinski.”

Dad didn’t respond for a while, sliding his gun into its holster with a troubled expression. He went around to the driver’s side, climbed in and shut the door. Eventually, he asked: “How do you know my name?”

“Because you’re my _father_ , you—” Stiles made a sound that was more sob than laugh. His eyes felt hot, the way they always did when he was about to cry, but he refused to. Not in front of this asshole, this usurper who dared to wear his dad’s face. “Take me to Deaton, if you wanna find out who I am and where I’m from. You gotta have Deaton, don’t you? He’s like the Gandalf of Beacon Hills. He has to be here, although I hope he isn’t a douchebag like you.”

The mention of Deaton made the suspicion in Dad’s—the man’s— _John’s_ gaze ratchet up even more. “You know Deaton,” he said, flatly.

“And if I’m lucky, he knows me. That, and how to get me back.”

“Back to where?”

“My home. My dad. Not… Not you. No offense, but that mafia hitman look you’ve got going? Doesn’t suit you half as much as the cop look, and my instinct’s telling me you’re not a cop. Cops don’t go around splashing folks with holy water, presuming that’s what you did to me. Who the heck did you imagine I was, Astaroth?”

“Astaroth wouldn’t be so annoying.”

“That’s what you think. I could carry you off to hell, just fine.”

“Do you _want_ me to kill you?”

“Not particularly, since my survival so far has been nothing short of miraculous. I get the feeling not a whole lotta people stay alive after seeing you pull that gun on ’em, huh?”

“They don’t,” said the man who wasn’t his dad, like admitting to murder wasn’t a big deal. He didn’t even glance at Stiles as he started the car.

Wonderful. Now, if only Stiles could stop shaking like a leaf, he’d be able to arrange the events of the last couple of weeks into a story that Deaton might believe. Stiles had a hunch that if his story didn’t fly, he’d end up back in the earth, in a shallow grave—and it would be his father’s doppelgänger who put him there.

 

* * *

 


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

Stiles was a veteran of awkward drives, but this drive took the cake. He’d stopped calling John “Dad” after the fourth time the bastard threatened to shoot him, which left Stiles with nothing to do but jiggle his leg restlessly until John threatened to shoot him for the _fifth_ time. At this rate, John would out-threaten Derek Hale. And that was saying something.

They made it to Deaton’s clinic just as Deaton was locking the door, clad in a trenchcoat and a lopsided hat, a first-aid box tucked under his arm. He halted when he saw the Jeep pulling up in his driveway. Stiles’s tension eased when he noticed that the clinic had the same faded sign, with Deaton’s apartment above it, on the upper storey.

John parked and got out, his boots thudding on the gravel. Even how he walked was different, all purposeful menace, his shoulders broader than Stiles remembered them.

“Where’re you going?” John asked Deaton, like he expected Deaton to be at his beck and call. God, what a jackass.

“I sensed a surge of energy from the forest, and that’s generally bad news, given the Nemeton. I was going there for a doctor’s visit, in case I had a new,” he rattled the box, “patient.”

“Yeah, about that.” John jerked his thumb at Stiles, who was cautiously stepping out of the Jeep, his cuffed hands in held front of him.

Deaton’s eyes narrowed. He had glasses, unlike the Deaton back home, but he still had that peacefulness to him, that serene omniscience. “You’re not from around here,” he said.

“That’s the understatement of the century,” Stiles muttered. “I bet that box of yours has more wolfsbane in it than bandages.”

Deaton studied him keenly. “So you know me, where you’re from.”

“You’ve saved my ass on a few occasions. Feel up to doing it again?”

“What’s going on?” John muscled in between them, gun out once more and aimed at Stiles. “Alan, you’ve met him?”

“Let’s get him inside, first, and into a set of dry clothes. Honestly, John, you didn’t even give the boy a blanket.”

“He’s not a boy. He came out of the Nemeton.”

“You make it sound worse than coming out of the closet,” Stiles complained. “Which was traumatic enough for me, thanks. Besides, don’t be such a speciesist. For shame, Daddy mine.”

Deaton cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “I. Well. Come on in.” He unlocked the door and padded inside, into the clinic’s waiting room, toeing off his shoes and hanging his hat on the coatrack.

John—who evidently had the manners of a caveman—just stomped his mud-stained boots on the doormat before plodding in, frogmarching Stiles ahead of him, with the pistol jammed against Stiles’s spine. Stiles got the distinct impression that if they were on the high seas and John was a pirate, Stiles would be walking the plank.

Great, now he was picturing himself as Peter Pan and John as Captain Hook. Which was disturbing, because Stiles really wouldn’t fit into leaf-panties.

“Put that gun away, John,” Deaton huffed. “It’s quite unnecessary.”

“You mean the kid’s human?”

“As human as you are.”

“ _He’s_ human?” Stiles marveled, as though astounded. “Seems perfectly monstrous, to me.”

John scowled. He lowered his gun grudgingly, holstering it like doing so was conceding defeat in an undeclared battle. Stubborn as an ox, wasn’t he?

Stiles smirked at him, jangling his cuffs obnoxiously till John unfastened them and pocketed them, too. The cuffs gleamed like polished silver, not steel, which… Shit. They would’ve melted through Stiles’s wrists like acid if he’d been a fae. John sure didn’t play nice.

“My name’s Stiles,” Stiles said to Deaton, brightly, determined to piss off his non-dad passive-aggressively, if he couldn’t do it directly. “And you’re Dr. Deaton, everyone’s friendly neighborhood veterinarian.”

“You have the advantage of me,” Deaton said, taking a pair of generic, green, hospital-style scrubs out of a cupboard. “And you are…?”

“Reckless teenager, classic porn aficionado, marginally competent lacrosse player and the only son of John Stilinski.”

“Don’t lie,” John growled.

“He’s not lying,” Deaton said calmly, and John stiffened. “His aura didn’t flicker when he said that. He’s John Stilinski’s son, just not _yours_.”

“What does that mean? He’s—” John scoffed. “You can’t be suggesting he’s—” He cut himself off, peering at Stiles. “He isn’t anything like me.”

“I take after my mom,” Stiles said, nettled.

John ignored him. “Alan, you must be mistaken. The Nemeton in Beacon Hills hasn’t managed a dimensional import in ninety years.”

“ _Import_? What am I, Ceylon tea?”

Deaton gave Stiles the scrubs and said, gently, “Get showered and changed. The shower’s upstairs and down the hall.”

Stiles’s eyes darted between Deaton and John. He was unwilling to leave them to talk about him in his absence, but then he figured that Deaton could only have a positive influence on Mr. Trigger-Happy, and obeyed.

When Stiles entered the shower, the steam fogged up his mind as well as the glass. He was overcome by aches and pains, like his body had been waiting for the adrenaline to subside before reminding him that, yep, it had been through hell. And a dimensional rift. A dimensional rift _to_ hell.

Groaning, Stiles pressed his forehead against the slick tiles, exhaustion seeping into his bones. All he wanted to do was sleep, but instead, he had to go out there and hash things out with Papa Bear.

But, hey, Deaton hadn’t required as much convincing as Stiles had feared, which was… good. Had his Deaton been able to see auras? Stiles couldn’t recall him mentioning it, but Deaton’s personal history was as classified as CIA documents.

Regardless, Stiles had to keep his trap shut about Deaton being an Emissary in his world, because he might get interrogated about which pack Deaton was an Emissary for, and Stiles wasn’t going to out the Hales to John, who considered not being human a crime worthy of the death penalty. This Deaton might even share that view, so Stiles would keep the Hales’ secret. Assuming that they had a secret.

Holy nutballs. Everything was so fucked up. Was Scott a human, in this universe? Was Peter a saint that helped li’l old ladies cross the street? Did the Hale fire never happen? Was Danny unpopular? Did Derek wax his eyebrows?

The possibilities made Stiles’s head spin. Or maybe that was the heat and the trauma—the heat from the shower and the trauma from Dadzilla, out there.

When he finished washing the dirt off his skin, he dried himself with the spare towel that was folded into a neat triangle on top of the linen shelf. He hopped into the scrubs, and slipped his dad’s badge out of the pocket of his sodden jeans to rinse it in the sink.

It was dented, as it had been since Jennifer had done a number on it, but it was Dad’s, his real dad’s, the only thing connecting Stiles to where he belonged—to _whom_ he belonged. He doubled over the sink, gulping in air, stomach roiling, sick to his soul with a longing so intense that it wracked him like a physical agony.

He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t.

He didn’t have anybody who gave a damn about him, here. Nobody who’d hug him if he was scared or sad. Nobody who’d make him his favorite macaroni-and-cheese when he had a fever, nobody who’d get angry with him if he got a D in Math, nobody who wouldn’t let him get away with bullshitting his way through life.

“Stiles?” Deaton knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay in there?”

“I,” Stiles gasped, “I’m fine.” He stuffed a fist into his mouth to keep from sobbing, his lungs burning with the effort of holding it in. When he could finally breathe, he said, as steadily as he could, “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“All right,” Deaton said doubtfully.

Stiles composed himself in degrees, hardening his resolve.

He _could_ do this. He had to. Because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t get back to Dad. To the man that must be missing him.

The badge went into a pocket in his scrubs, where it felt heavier than it ever had.

“Yo,” he said, when he returned to the waiting room, where Da—where John was sitting in a plastic chair, flipping through a women’s magazine. Deaton had an enormous grimoire propped on the reception desk, open to a page sporting a woodcut of a Nemeton, taking notes in Latin on a prescription pad. “Have you ladies had your bake sale already, or can I still buy a slice of certain doom?”

John tossed the magazine onto its stand. “You took your time.”

“What can I say? We teenagers have needs. I have a Pavlovian response to showers, by now. If you know what I mean.”

The look on John’s face was so hilarious that Stiles almost cracked a smile. Almost.

“So,” Stiles swung himself up onto the reception desk, next to Deaton, and leaned in to examine the woodcut. “Whaddaya got? Can I go home?”

“Yes,” Deaton said, and hope surged within Stiles. “If you can find a functioning Nemeton to take you back.”

“Er, don’t we _have_ a functioning Nemeton?”

Deaton sighed, pushing his glasses up his nose. “We did. It spent most of its power in bringing you to us; inter-dimensional travel is extremely rare. It might be decades before it’s capable of sending you home.”

No. No. _No_. “What am I gonna do, until then?” Stiles’s voice shook. “I don’t exist, in this reality. Am I supposed to get a fake ID and live in the shadows?”

“There are other Nemetons,” John said. “Theoretically.”

“Theoretically?” Stiles said incredulously. “And where am I going to find these theoretical Nemetons?”

“By tracking supernatural activity along ley lines.”

Deaton nodded. “Creatures of all kinds are attracted to Nemetons. A town like Beacon Hills, where multiple mysterious incidents are reported, might have a Nemeton of its own.”

“It’s my job to hunt those creatures,” John said, confirming Stiles’s hunch that he was a professional hunter, like Chris Argent used to be. “I can draw you up a map of places where I’ve had more trouble than usual.”

That… that was better. There was a chance, however slight. “But how will I get to those places? I don’t have the spare change to get me down the block on a public bus.”

“You’ll accompany John on his hunts,” Deaton said, in a tone that brooked no argument, and John rose from his chair indignantly.

“No, he won’t. I’m not taking a _child_ with me on missions that could get him killed.”

“And going alone is less likely to get me killed?” Stiles rolled his eyes. “Just admit you don’t give a fuck about me.”

“I don’t.” To Deaton, John said: “He might be another John Stilinski’s son, from another world. That doesn’t mean he’s mine. I refuse to take responsibility for him.”

It hurt, getting denied like that by his dad. But it wasn’t Stiles’s dad. That was the point, wasn’t it? “Dude, you’re like the opposite of Darth Vader. _Luke, I am not your father._ Gee, I feel so loved.”

John hesitated. After a moment of apparent consternation, he reached for his wallet and passed Stiles an American Express Black Card.

Stiles gaped at it. He knew that hunting families tended to have a lot of accumulated wealth, but Stiles was stunned by the idea that the Stilinskis could be rich, in any dimension.

“This is one of the accounts I use when I’m on my hunts.”

Was John serious? He thought he could buy Stiles off with money?

“That should pay for several cross-country flights, and any living expenses, like food and accommodation. Destroy it when you’re done using it.”

Stiles flung the card back at him, furious. “I don’t want your money,” he hissed. “I want my dad. Not _you_ , don’t worry,” Stiles sneered at John’s discomfort. “You couldn’t parent your way out of a paper bag.”

“Stiles is correct,” Deaton said. “You’re being awful, John.”

“What else can I—” John ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I’m not taking him with me.”

Deaton looked at him levelly.

“I’m _not_.”

“You said you returned to hunting because you couldn’t tolerate innocent human lives being lost, if you could save them. Do you think this boy will survive the search for a Nemeton, by himself?”

John clenched his fists. Unclenched them. Clenched them again. “God damn it,” he said. “Okay. Yeah. Satisfied?”

“You don’t have to be so thrilled at the prospect,” Stiles drawled. “I assure you, I’m as overjoyed as you are.”

“Now,” Deaton said blithely, like he hadn’t just Jiminy Cricketed the heck outta John. “I’m going to make us all some coffee, and you,” he addressed Stiles, “are going to explain exactly how you got here, and what ritual you performed.”

“Yay,” said Stiles, as John glared at him like he was a piece of gum stuck to the bottom of John’s shoe. “I hate expositions in novels, and this? This is weirder than any novel I’ve read.”

 

* * *

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve exaggerated the financial disparity between the Argents and the Stilinskis.

* * *

 

It took an hour for Stiles to describe the ritual, from the bags of ice to the faux-drowning to the picking of anchors. Deaton didn’t seem shocked by any of it, even saying, “I thought as much,” but John was visibly disconcerted when Stiles said he’d gone through the ritual to save his dad.

“You’re so transparent,” Stiles said bitterly. “Relax. You don’t owe me for what I did for my dad. Because, like you keep saying, you’re not my dad. Four for you. What an excellent job you did in _not_ raising me.”

Of course, Stiles hadn’t mentioned that Scott and Isaac were werewolves, or that Allison was a hunter’s daughter. John had squinted at him mistrustfully, cottoning onto Stiles’s prevarication with the same flawless intuition as Stiles’s dad, but in this case, it was annoying and inconvenient rather than annoying and reassuring.

“One day, I’m going to make you tell me everything,” John said, like a Spanish inquisitor. Too bad for him that Stiles definitely did expect the Spanish Inquisition.

“Oh, yeah? What’re you gonna do, spank me?” Stiles shot back, and ended up sniggering when Deaton choked on his coffee.

When Deaton was satisfied by Stiles’s story, he let Stiles and John go.

“Can’t I sleep at the clinic?” Stiles hedged. The exhaustion from his shower was replaced by a brittle, over-energized twitchiness that had him on edge. He was wired, hopped-up on stress hormones, and he wasn’t sure being alone with John was a good idea. He might irritate John into killing him. For real.

Deaton patted his back reassuringly. “You should become accustomed to each other prior to your journey, and you may have plans to discuss, besides. You’ll be fine, Stiles.” Deaton smiled. “He has teeth, but he isn’t actually going to eat you.”

Given the number of creatures that had tried to eat him in Beacon Hills, Stiles wasn’t consoled. “Ha bloody ha,” he said. There was an additional reason Stiles wasn’t eager to stay with John; he was afraid of discovering that the house would be different, in this world. Somehow, the possibility of Stiles’s home having changed was as scary as John himself was. For Stiles, it would be like losing his safe haven, even if it was only in his mind—the haven he’d shared with Dad.

“And John,” Deaton said, “you’d better tell him about your wife and son. About how you lost them.”

John tensed.

“You know why.” Deaton put a hand on John’s shoulder. “You’ve lost your own child. You wouldn’t want Stiles’s father to lose his.”

John shrugged Deaton’s hand off, not bothering to answer him, and gestured at Stiles to follow him out to the car.

Awesome. Stiles was going to be treated to John’s tragic backstory. Like Stiles didn’t have enough tragedy of his own to deal with.

 

* * *

 

Just as Stiles had predicted, the house was different. But not altogether foreign.

“That’s the…” Stiles trailed off, because he’d almost said, _the Argent house_. “Um. That house belonged to someone else, where I came from.” Did this mean the Argents lived in the Stilinski house? Was there some weird role reversal going on, here? Because it was creepy as fuck to see the palatial Argent house looming out of the darkness, where the humble Stilinski hovel should’ve been.

John, again, didn’t say anything. He just climbed out of the Jeep, turned the key in the front door, and went inside.

Cripes. If John got any more Strong and Silent, he could successfully audition for a cowboy movie. He already had the “John” part of the “John Wayne” going for him.

Stiles shut the door behind them both, grumbling to himself about Batcaves and emotional constipation, and ran into John.

John, who was just standing there, staring at his living room like it was an alien planet. Perhaps it was; it had a deserted, musty air to it, like John wasn’t here often enough to give it that lived-in feel.

“Sit,” John said, pointing at the dusty furniture, and Stiles sat on a luxurious couch with clawed feet that probably hadn’t been sat on since the Middle Ages. It groaned like an accordion. Or like a particularly musical fart. Stiles tried not to giggle nervously.

“Is this all ancestral stuff? The, um, Gothic-themed fireplace and the couch from Satan’s anteroom?”

“Yes,” John replied shortly. Then, he marched over to a giant ebony-and-glass monstrosity that was apparently a glorified liquor cabinet, because John opened it, retrieved two undrunk bottles of Jim Beam, and plonked them on the (also claw-footed) coffee table between the couch and the leather armchair. John took the armchair.

“Oh, thank god,” Stiles said fervently, reaching for one of the bottles.

John slapped him away. “These are for me.”

“ _Both_ of them?”

John’s reply consisted of uncapping a bottle, sticking it into his mouth and knocking back half of it in a long swallow.

Stiles’s eyes widened. “Do you even have a liver, anymore? Just curious.”

“Shut up,” said John, “and listen.”

“I’m a terrible listener,” Stiles said preemptively, in his own defense, but then John began speaking, and Stiles… wasn’t prepared for it.

“I killed my wife,” John said, not looking at Stiles.

Stiles went cold. “Wh-what?”

“Murdered her. Four shots to the heart with silver bullets. She didn’t die easy, though, so I held her down and slit her throat until she stopped clawing at me. I didn’t wash her blood off myself for days. Couldn’t bring myself to. It was all I had left of her.” There was a stony cast to John’s face as he spoke, an unnerving blankness. “I sat there shaking, stinking, attracting flies, until Deaton found me. A few feet away, my infant son lay dead in his playpen, ripped apart. I kept telling myself that if I didn’t try to wake him, I could pretend that he was just sleeping. Things stop making sense pretty fast, when you lose what’s most important to you.”

Stiles was transfixed by horror, unable to so much as breathe. From what he could piece together, John’s wife had been turned in some way, but—what about the baby?

“Her name was Rhonda. Her last experience was being killed by her husband, after she killed her own son.” John emptied his bottle, and twisted the cap off the other. “That’s not how she should’ve gone.”

Fuck. That—what could Stiles _say_ to that? It had been horrifying enough, losing his mom to cancer, but to lose her like that? After she’d become feral, and had to be put down? It made Stiles want to puke. “What… What was it that bit her?”

“She wasn’t bitten. She was possessed. By a Nogitsune.”

Stiles frowned. Wasn’t there a creature like that in the bestiary? A destructive evil spirit that drove ordinary people irrevocably mad with bloodlust, until they slaughtered everyone they came across? “Was it Japanese?”

“It was. Is.”

“ _Is?_ Didn’t you, uh…”

“Kill it when I killed my wife? No. A part of its spirit escaped, swearing vengeance before it disappeared. And that’s why Deaton said to fill you in on this. Because I have a Nogitsune after me. It’s out for revenge, and at some point, when it’s recovered enough—”

“Like the Nemeton has to recover?”

John nodded tightly. “Like that. When it’s restored to its original power, the Nogitsune will attack me and potentially anyone near me.” John looked at Stiles, and it was such a weary expression—so reminiscent of Dad’s expression whenever he was remembering Mom—that Stiles’s heart ached. “You have to choose whether or not you can be that person. Obviously, Deaton reckons you’ll come with me, because you’ve already risked your life for your father once. But you still deserve to make an informed choice. Accompany me, and you may have to confront the Nogitsune.”

“But I may not,” Stiles argued. “What if it takes the Nogitsune twenty years to recover, and I go back in five?” He _was_ terrified of being possessed and going rabid, however, and he couldn’t quite keep the wobble out of his voice. “You’ve got, er, equipment to prevent possession, haven’t you? After what… After what happened?”

“I have talismans I’ll give to you, yeah. The same talismans I wear. But they won’t protect you from anybody else the Nogitsune possesses, around you. You’re going to have to get used to being on guard constantly. It could be anyone. A nice old lady you run into at a drug store might be possessed by the Nogitsune. She could tear your trachea out of your neck before you blink. A guy flipping burgers at the burger joint we’re in could stroll out of the kitchen and stab you in the chest. The Nogitsune could act at any time, anywhere.”

“Jesus.” Stiles couldn’t suppress a shudder. “Is that why you’re such a paranoid asshole? Because you’ve been watching your back non-stop for years?”

“Eighteen years.” John chugged his bourbon. “I was twenty-two when I lost my family. I’m forty, now.”

Stiles fell silent, because he didn’t know what to say. “What was your son’s name?” he asked finally, quietly.

“Jordan.”

A prickle of familiarity gave Stiles pause. Oh, god. It couldn’t be… could it? There was that new deputy Dad had gushed over, and his name was— “Was your wife’s—was her surname Parrish?”

John didn’t even seem surprised, merely dully accepting. “What, you knew her, too?”

“Just—just Jordan. He’s alive and well, where I’m from. He’s a deputy. A brilliant deputy, as far as my dad’s concerned.”

A spasm shook John’s hand as he gripped his bottle. “He has my son,” John said, and for a moment, he sounded like he _hated_ Dad.

“Well,” Stiles said, awkwardly and with an inexplicable guilt, “you have his.”

A mirthless smile curved John’s lips. “I don’t want his. I want mine.”

Okay. Ouch. But understandable, nonetheless. Stiles was frankly stunned that John was even remotely functional, especially given the fact that he continued to blame himself for killing his wife, despite there having been no option, back then. He’d called it murder, after all. He believed he was his wife’s murderer. “That’s why you haven’t started another family, isn’t it? And why you’re keeping me at bay? Because you’re worried I’ll die if I’m with you?”

“Leave the psychoanalysis to Deaton, kid.” John flinched when Stiles got up from the couch and approached him. “Don’t touch me.”

“You need to be touched, dude. You’re going crazy like those monkeys they keep in cages. They go all loopy without physical contact.”

“What’re you planning to do?” John said acidly. “ _Hug_ me?”

“Your sarcasm means you need hugging more than ever.”

John stood and retreated—fled?—to the liquor cabinet.

“Would you rather get even drunker and sadder than just get a hug?”

“I didn’t tell you any of this for you to pity me,” John snapped, his back to Stiles, scrutinizing the contents of the cabinet like it contained the mysteries of the universe.

“It’s not pity. It’s empathy.”

“Empathy?” John barked a laugh, like the very concept was ludicrous. “You’re too fucking soft to survive a minute, out there. Empathy’s what’ll get you butchered when a tiny nine-year-old girl turns out to be a Wendigo in disguise.”

“Can we not talk about hypothetical miniature Wendigos and focus on the hypothetical options I _may_ have if I don’t go with you?”

“Deaton will employ you as an apprentice at his veterinary practice until you can support yourself. With his connections, he’ll get you a legal identity, and let you continue to live your life in Beacon Hills.”

“Without my dad.”

John selected a Kentucky bourbon, hefting it pensively. “You get to determine which option’s worse. I don’t give a shit, either way.” He waved his bottle in the direction of the stairs. “There’s a guest bedroom upstairs and down the hall, second door to the left. Can’t say it’s clean, but it’s better than the mud you crawled out of. Go to bed and think about it as you fall asleep. Tell me what you’ve decided, tomorrow.”

“I can tell you today. I’m going with you. I’m not quitting on my dad.”

“Tomorrow,” John said dismissively. “I can’t trust a teenager’s whims. I’m not bringing you back here if you chicken out halfway across the United States.”

“I won’t _chicken_ —”

“Go. To. Bed,” John repeated.

Sensing that John was at the end of his tether, and was likely desperate to spend the next couple of hours drinking himself stupid, Stiles sighed and trudged up the stairs. That they were uncannily similar to the lushly carpeted Argent staircase didn’t even hold his attention; all he knew was that he should be downstairs instead, that he couldn’t bear leaving John with nothing but alcohol to comfort him, just like Stiles couldn’t have borne leaving his dad. Like Stiles had to protect John from his grief, somehow.

This was so bizarre. Stiles wasn’t supposed to be—to be sympathizing with the bastard. Maybe John was right to scoff at Stiles’s unwanted empathy. Maybe Stiles had to stop feeling sorry for John and remind himself just how sorry his own situation was.

But Stiles couldn’t forget John’s words, rough and forcibly even, as he confessed to having killed his wife. Even after Stiles found the guest bedroom and collapsed on top of the dusty sheets that smelled like they hadn’t been laundered in decades, he couldn’t get rid of the residual horror of John’s narration, the image of a toddler dismembered in a playpen, and of a mother with her throat cut, trying to gulp in her dying breaths through the blood bubbling up in her severed windpipe.

And it had happened here. In this very building.

John had told him to think about his decision, but Stiles couldn’t think, couldn’t hang onto a single train of thought. It wasn’t just the tiredness. Despite the fatigue that weighed him down like an anchor, Stiles lay there with his eyes wide open, inhaling the odor of disuse that surrounded him. He felt strangely as if he were sleeping inside a corpse, this once-grand house an abandoned cadaver devoured from within by worm-like memories, hollow and rotten, echoing with loss.

 

* * *

 


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

 

Stiles woke up with grainy eyeballs and a stomach that resembled a bottomless pit more than it did a human organ. God, how long had it been since he’d eaten anything? He rolled over, groaning, and dragged himself out of bed, blinking blearily at the heavy drapes with twining serpents embroidered on them, and the horrible patterned wallpaper that was out of a Victorian horror novel. Or a very specific Disney movie.

Given the outrageously intimidating furnishings, Stiles was beginning to feel more and more like Belle. But what was the Beast up to, elsewhere in this fortress of solitude?

Hopefully breakfast. Jesus, but Stiles could eat a mountain of waffles and drink several rivers’ worth of maple syrup.

He rinsed his mouth in the adjoining bathroom, and adjusted Deaton’s scrubs so they weren’t hanging off his shoulder. The waif look wouldn’t win him any points with a hardass like John. No more of the pale-skin-and-fragile-bones aesthetic. Stiles had to be strong. Sturdy. Durable. Not liable to die on John like… like everyone else.

Wow. That was a heck of a downer, insofar as morning thoughts went. It occurred to Stiles that he wasn’t going to be worrying about normal things like homework and girls (and boys) for a long, long while. Instead, he was going to be worrying about inter-dimensional rifts and the dubious mental health of his traveling companion. That said, Stiles’s life hadn’t been very normal lately, had it? He couldn’t blame everything on the Nemeton.

Stiles descended the staircase and wandered into the kitchen, the location of which he only recalled because he’d been in Allison’s kitchen. There, he found John seated at the kitchen platform, a mug of cold coffee congealing in front of him, his eyes bloodshot-red and fixed unseeingly on the opposite wall.

He also had a Glock next to his elbow. Who on earth kept _guns_ with them at kitchen tables?

Guys waiting for Nogitsunes, evidently.

“So,” Stiles said, with all the strained cheerfulness he could muster, sliding onto the stool adjacent to John’s. “What’s for breakfast?”

“What?” John asked hoarsely.

“Breakfast. Y’know. Breaking fast? A thing that is done in the mornings? The consumption of sustenance prior to starting one’s day?”

John stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“Holy shit. There’s no food _anywhere_ in this house, is there? What do you feed yourself on, manpain? The remains of your enemies?”

Slowly, John roused himself from his trance. Had he even slept, or just drunk all night? “Take my cash and go to the… the place.”

“The place?”

“Br’fast,” John mumbled, rubbing his palms over his face. “It serves breakfast.”

This was… it wasn’t _cute_ , Stiles told himself sternly. Even dragons looked deceptively cute when they were sleepy, but you sure as hell weren’t supposed to tickle them. “Is that Patty’s coffee shop, just down the block?”

“Yeah.” John flapped a hand at him. “Go.”

“Where’s the cash?”

“In my wallet.”

“And where’s the wallet?” Stiles asked patiently, fighting the urge to smile.

“Somewhere. On the mantelpiece, maybe. Take it and go.”

“You remember where your booze is but not where your wallet is?”

John scowled at him vaguely and without his usual vehemence. “Get outta here and fill yourself up, all right?”

“What about you? Should I get you something?”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” Stiles said, exasperated. “I’m getting you a bagel.”

“You aren’t my nurse.”

“Someone has to be.”

“Just… lemme alone,” John said, and groped for his coffee mug blindly, the knuckles of his spare hand kneading his now-closed eyelids.

“Uh-huh. Try not to drink coffee from your gun, okay? I’d rather you were alive for that bagel.”

“Grm.”

What did that noise even mean? Giving up on any meaningful conversation until John had overcome his hangover, Stiles ventured out to the living room, pocketed the wallet on the chest of drawers (not the mantelpiece), and left the house.

 

* * *

 

Patty’s shop was as busy as it was in Stiles’s world, and it galled, to be so close to home but nowhere near it, at the same time. He ordered waffles with bacon and maple syrup, and ate them then and there, because he’d pass out if he didn’t eat immediately. John’s chicken-and-avocado bagel rested near his arm, warm and wrapped in brown paper, a healthier alternative than what Stiles was having.

Stiles hunched over his waffles, eyes suddenly stinging, because Dad didn’t have anyone to take care of him, and here Stiles was, traitorously fretting over somebody else.

He was so wrapped up in his sorrow—John’s misery must be contagious—that he almost missed Scott walking past his booth.

Scott McCall.

Skinnier than the muscular werewolf version Stiles had gotten accustomed to, gawky and lanky. His hair was a mess, and he was yawning, which meant this was an ordinary Saturday morning and he was picking up breakfast for Mrs. McCall, after one of her night-shifts. Presuming that Melissa McCall still had night-shifts.

“Hey,” said Stiles, before he could help it, jumping to his feet and waving. “Scott! Is that you?”

Scott turned, confused, and his lack of recognition was as much of a jarring shock as John’s lack of recognition, yesterday. “Um,” said Scott, “do I know you?”

God. That was—that _hurt_. Pulling on a smile by main force, Stiles said, “Er, I used to—we used to go to kindergarten. Together. Ages ago. My name’s Stiles.”

“Kindergarten?” Scott seemed no less puzzled, but then, trusting as always, he grinned. “No kidding! And you recognized me?”

“It’s the jawline, dude. Couldn’t forget it.”

Scott laughed, settling across from Stiles. “Did you leave Beacon Hills, or what?”

“My… parents moved to Silicon Valley. My mom ran a start-up.”

“Whoa. You must be loaded.”

“Not quite. Things didn’t, uh, fly.”

“Too bad, buddy.” Scott raised his eyebrows. “Why’re you in scrubs?”

“Huh?” Oh. Stiles was wearing Deaton’s scrubs. “I’m helping Dr. Deaton out, today.”

“I was thinking of helping him out, too! Easy money, plus the animals are adorable.”

“Don’t worry about stealing my job; I’m just keeping busy while I’m visiting.”

“Who’re you visiting?”

“My uncle. John Stilinski.”

Scott’s grin froze. “Oh.”

“What?”

“No, nothing. Just. Mr. Stilinski—he’s a little—”

“Scary?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, relieved. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to offend you.”

“You didn’t offend me. He _is_ scary.”

“It’s just… Most folks tend to stay away from him, even though the sheriff proved him innocent in… in Mrs. Stilinski’s death. Said it was self-defense.”

Stiles’s blood ran cold. Of course John would’ve got into trouble with the law, with a dead son and a dead wife to explain. But imagining John having to stand trial, having to be interrogated by suspicious cops, and then ostracized by the whole Beacon Hills community… it was sickening. After what John had gone through—what he had _lost_ —for him to be isolated by the rest of town, with no one except Deaton to be there for him through his mourning… It made a surge of sharp, unbearable protectiveness rise in Stiles, surprising him with its intensity.

“Sorry,” Scott said, again, looking contrite. “You mustn’t—you wouldn’t want to hear about that. They were your family, after all.”

“Nah, it’s been ages, and I never met them. I was born a year later. So, who’s the sheriff?” Stiles asked, as casually as he could, although he suspected he knew the answer.

“Chris Argent, have you heard of him? He kicks ass. So does his daughter,” said Scott, blushing. “She’s a national archery champion.”

Stiles quirked a grin of his own to cover how upset he was about being told that John Stilinski had been abandoned by the locals who _should’ve_ been checking in on him, bringing him casseroles and talking to him and supporting him through his bereavement. Stiles was angry—angrier than he’d expected to be, and that was making it hard to be pleasant with poor Scott, who hadn’t even been there then, and who couldn’t stop his motor-mouth from going off. That was just Scott. Sweet, defenseless and not given to undue tact. Tact was a kind of pretense, and Scott didn’t do pretense. “Have a crush on her, do you?”

“Oh, crap. Am I that obvious?”

“Juuuuust a bit.” Stiles smirked. “Listen, I gotta go and get this bagel to Deaton.” Since Stiles was allegedly working for him.

“Right,” said Scott, “and I have to get my mum her morning treat. It was nice meeting you.”

“Likewise.” Stiles held out his hand to be shook. “I’ll see you around?”

“Definitely. It’s awesome to have you back.”

Stiles escaped the shop before he could lose control of his facial features. He wouldn’t have been able to finish his waffles, anyway. Not with how cheesed off he was.

Goddamn John Stilinski, giving Stiles’s emotions the sort of workout Derek gave his abs.

John had better appreciate that bagel.

 

* * *

 

While the bagel didn’t get any enthusiastic appreciation from John, it did get consumed, so Stiles had to settle for that. John gave Stiles a towel that stank of mothballs, afterward, and Stiles returned to the bathroom he’d adopted earlier, which had pipes clunky from disuse, a rusty shower-head and a dry, hard bar of unused soap.

After showering, Stiles put on his scrubs, and it occurred to him that he needed to go shopping for clothes. Relying on John’s money made him uncomfortable, but it wasn’t like he had a choice. He’d just have to repay John, somehow.

When Stiles went downstairs, John had showered and changed, as well. It struck Stiles how unlike Dad this guy was, because his fashion sense was—it was right out of _Mad Max_ , or some post-apocalyptic, zombie-ish, end-of-days movie. His black, scuffed leather jacket sat snugly on his broad shoulders, but didn’t entirely conceal his shoulder-holster or his double thigh-holsters, or the multiple hilted knives and daggers strapped to his belt. Stiles would bet good money that they were all silver. And then there were John’s sturdy, uber-masculine, military-grade boots. The type of boots video-game characters wore while wading through the entrails of slain ogres.

Dad preferred soft, plaid-themed clothes whenever he wasn’t on duty; John dressed like he was always on duty. He was slimmer, sharper and _meaner_ , his body perpetually coiled to strike. His clothing was as weaponized as his actual weapons, each item he wore chosen for its durability or deadliness. It was as if he was clad in armor.

Stiles surveyed John with a peculiar sense of unreality. “Well, if it ain’t Yosemite Sam.”

John grunted. “I’m armed because I need to be.”

“You look like you’re going to war.”

“This is a war.”

“Can’t you treat it like, I dunno, crime-solving? Making it about individuals instead of a hate-driven generalization of those who happen to be non-human?”

“Any conflict in which people die is a war.”

“So you admit they’re people.”

“Don’t twist my words, kid. You’re getting a gun of your own. Can you use ’em, or am I going to have to give you a crash course?”

“I got a course already, thanks.” He’d secretly asked Chris for help, a few weeks ago, without telling Dad. As a result, Stiles could handle a selection of pistols and shotguns, although he would benefit from a refresher. He just didn’t want a refresher from John the Ripper, here. “But I’m not going to shoot anybody.”

“Then you’ll die.” John didn’t appear bothered by the prospect. “Did it occur to you that whatever saintly supernatural creatures you met in that perfect world of yours, this world only has the dangerous ones?”

“I did meet the dangerous ones.” Peter, now, Stiles wouldn’t have any qualms about shooting Peter. “I just don’t think you should paint everyone with the same brush.”

“Take your ideals somewhere else. When you’re in my house—or in my car—you do as I say.”

“I’m not that great at obeying instructions.”

“You will be,” John said grimly. He led Stiles down to the basement, which, like in the Argent household, was an armory. A really huge armory. The walls bristled with guns and blades of varying sizes and styles, and there was a glass-lidded counter with hundreds of labeled containers for toxic herbs, venoms and poisons.

Stiles whistled. “You could equip a small army with this.”

“Sometimes, I do. I’m the Holder of Arms for the West Coast. Whenever there’s a threat big enough to need interstate action, other hunters from the region gather at my base, arm themselves, and we proceed from there.”

“That’s an official title, is it? Holder of Arms? Pretty flashy.”

“It is an honor, but nothing to boast about. I haven’t earned the title; it was earned by my grandmother.”

Stiles wondered if she’d been like Victoria Argent. He’d never seen his grandparents, but it would’ve been cool to have a badass grandma. “Neat. So which one of these babies is mine?”

John chose a .45, handing it to Stiles and opening a side-door into a vast, echoing, underground shooting range. Stiles goggled. It was like the mansion of Lara Croft. “Start with this. Show me what you can do.”

It was a dare. It was plainly a dare, meant to manipulate Stiles into cooperating, and even though Stiles was aware of that, he couldn’t help wanting to measure up, wanting to impress. “Any muffs to protect my ears?”

“You won’t have muffs in the wild, princess,” John said contemptuously. “Just shoot.”

“Goodbye, eardrums,” Stiles muttered to himself, and aimed, steadying his legs against the kickback. The cutout at the end of his row swung as the bullet hit, and Stiles winced as his ears rang with the bang.

“At least you hit the target,” John said, and brought the cutout forward so that Stiles could see the hole he’d made near the cutout’s hip. “Your aim will improve if your grip is steady.” He stepped in behind Stiles and cupped Stiles’s elbow, sliding his grasp forward along Stiles’s forearm.

“Hypocrite. You can touch me, but I can’t touch you?”

“Aimless hugging isn’t the same as training. Focus.”

“Hugging isn’t aimless. It’s crucial to a person’s emotional and psychological health—”

“ _Focus_.”

Stiles focused. Or tried to. He shot a couple more rounds, and managed to improve enough to hit the torso more often than not, but John’s proximity made him oddly antsy. It wasn’t… It wasn’t like having Dad near him. This was someone _else_ , the shape of him and the feel of him unsettlingly different, and even his scent was—

“I told you to focus.”

“I _am_ focusing. Just… give me space, will ya? All I can smell with you this close is leather and angst.”

“You might be smelling gunpowder and gore. I’m a walk in a fucking rose garden by comparison.”

“I can’t get over the fact that you swear.”

“Was your dad too missish for swearing?”

“He wasn’t—he wasn’t missish! He was a man among men.”

“No doubt,” John said sarcastically. “Now. Shoot.”

“My arm’s sore.”

“Even better. Shoot until you can’t, anymore.”

“Sadist,” Stiles accused. “And what’re you gonna do while I hobble myself, loom behind me and gloat?”

“I’ll go up to the library and plot our first destination on a map, after calling Deaton to find out what the nearest hotspot of supernatural activity is. _You_ are going to fire the practice ammo I gave you until there’re no bullets left, and when you’re done, I’ll give you your knives and herbs, and we’ll set off. I’ll buy you some T-shirts and jeans on the way.”

“I could be home within the week,” Stiles said, beaming.

“Or the decade.”

“Gee, thanks for that, Grumpy McGrumps.” Stiles aimed his gun again. “Go do your thang. I’ll join you once I’ve transformed into Doc Holliday.”

 

* * *

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve increased the maximum time for which medical prescriptions can be issued.

* * *

 

Stiles was armed with a knife, a stake, an anti-possession amulet, a gun and a pouch with compartments for Mountain Ash, wolfsbane and salt. John considered this the bare minimum, but Stiles wasn’t exactly thrilled at being given equipment to kill people with. He did get the importance of self-defense, but he wasn’t going to poison, shoot or stab random supernatural creatures simply for being who they were. He wasn’t an executioner, like John was.

While Stiles would never be completely on-board with killing, he could see the need to stop psychos like Peter Hale or Gerard Argent. It was just that the psychos that needed to be stopped weren’t always non-human. Humans could be just as destructive. Like Kate. Or Gerard.

Stiles shuddered.

“Afraid you’ll cut yourself on your knife?” John jeered.

“Afraid you’ll discover you have a conscience?” Stiles retorted. “What if you meet a little ol’ granny who happens to be a harmless kitsune, and a serial killer who happens to be human? Who deserves to die more?”

“I don’t attack humans.”

“You are such a speciesist.”

“Traditional law enforcement apprehends and sentences human criminals.”

“And you sentence the non-human ones?”

“I adhere to the Code.”

“Mm-hm. Doesn’t the Code dictate killing only those who’ve killed already?”

John zeroed in on him with a frankly daunting curiosity. “You knew a hunter. Didn’t you?”

Whoops. Didn’t mean to give that away.

“Who was it?”

“Does it matter?” Stiles crammed his supplies into the knapsack John had given him, because he’d rejected the holster-and-belt combo John had offered him for his weapons. Stiles wasn’t G.I. Joe, and he wasn’t gonna pretend he was. “Let bygones be bygones.”

“You’re sheltering friends who aren’t human,” John hazarded, with devastating accuracy. “If you knew a hunter, you must’ve known your fair share of critters.”

Critters? Scott wasn’t a _critter_. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.” Scott was human here, but still. What if the others weren’t? If the Hales were still werewolves and had managed to remain under John’s radar, Stiles wasn’t about to unmask them.

“Divided loyalties are liable to get you killed.” John lowered his voice threateningly. “And while you’re with me, you’re loyal to me, not anybody else. Understood?”

“Understood,” said Stiles, but he couldn’t keep from sounding mulish—the type of mulish that usually got on Dad’s nerves. It had the same affect on John, given the thunderous cast of his brow.

“Whatever issues with authority you have when it comes to your father, when it comes to _me_ , you follow orders.”

“Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.” Stiles saluted as sassily as he could, and strode past John—or tried to. Before he could move, he was being slammed against the nearest wall, and John was all up in his face, glowering like a maddened bear. Seriously, why did all these men think slamming Stiles against surfaces would make him obedient? It was more likely to make him uncooperative.

“Follow. My. Orders,” John said. “If you fail to follow my orders, you put yourself in danger.”

“Don’t pass off your power-tripping as concern for me, when you couldn’t care less whether I lived or died.”

“I promised Deaton I’d protect you. I keep my promises.”

“So do I. And I promised to get back home. That’s the only promise that matters to me, and I’ll do what it takes to keep that promise, whether or not it means obeying you.” Stiles pushed at John until he backed off. “You said you’re not my dad, so don’t act like you have the right to order me around.”

“This isn’t about me being your father, you—” John pinched the bridge of his nose. “When we’re on missions, I’m your commanding officer. Hunts are like military operations, and there has to be a chain of command.”

“Keep your chains to yourself. I’m not your clone or your soldier. I’ll act on my conscience and as per my own rules, and I won’t kill unless I have to. If you don’t like it, you can kick me out; I’ll find a Nemeton myself.”

John was struck momentarily speechless. He looked at Stiles like he’d never seen him before, and then he said, “You give your father all the trouble he can handle, don’t you?”

Not wanting to admit that was the truth, Stiles picked up the knapsack that had slid to the floor during John’s caveman routine, and said, “I, er. I might have to consult a doctor, before we vamoose. To get a prescription for Adderall. Adderall XR, specifically. Twenty milligrams a day.”

“What is it for, ADHD?” John frowned. “You get _more_ hyperactive than this?”

“And more impulsive. Unless you’re fine with me bouncing around in your car and driving you insane, you oughta get me my medication. I’ve missed a dose, and I’m a nightmare when I’m in withdrawal. I suggest we act fast.”

“Christ.”

“It’s expensive,” Stiles said stiffly, embarrassed to be bringing this up after insisting that he wasn’t dependent on John. “But I’ll… I’ll pay you back. Eventually. I swear.”

“Don’t be absurd. Buying some Adderall won’t make a dent in my bank account.”

“Excuse me for not being a rich, entitled jerk.”

“But you do believe you’re entitled to me, don’t you? To accompany me on your terms, not mine?”

“I’m not—”

“If you don’t do your share of the hunting, I’ll be putting my neck on the line for you, twice over. Not entitled, huh?”

Satisfied with having won the argument, John left, and Stiles watched him go, fuming.

“Stupid swaggering cowboy dickhead,” Stiles griped, before tramping along after him.

 

* * *

 

They ended up at Deaton’s office, once more. Stiles figured it was to gather intel before their grand departure, but it turned out to be for his Adderall. Deaton calmly wrote the prescription out for Stiles as Stiles peered at him.

“Aren’t you a vet? Vets can’t prescribe for humans, can they?”

“I’m a qualified physician. It’s just that a veterinarian suited my cover identity at Beacon Hills.”

“Your cover identity?” Stiles said, incredulously. “Is your name even Alan Deaton?”

Deaton smiled beatifically, and didn’t answer.

Amazing. Deaton was a superhero. “But when did you get qualified as a doctor?”

“For the first time?” John’s eyes were twinkling, and there was a surprising fondness in them as he regarded Deaton. “In 1928.”

Stiles’s jaw dropped.

“John,” Deaton chided, gently.

“But John doesn’t like non-humans!” Stiles exclaimed. “And you’re immortal, so you can’t be human!”

Deaton cleared his throat. “Actually, I can. And I’m not immortal, merely… resilient. Most human witches are. I’m nothing special.”

“You’ve got me convinced,” said Stiles skeptically, not mentioning that Deaton was an emissary in his universe, not a witch. Unless an emissary was a subcategory of witch. “Nothing special about having been around for _generations_ and barely looking like you’re forty.”

“You flatter me.” Deaton gave Stiles his prescription. “There’s a Walgreens an hour out of town, whose pharmacist is… an ally, you might say. She isn’t a witch, but a psychic. She’ll give you enough Adderall for four months.”

“A Walgreens psychic,” Stiles marveled. “Will wonders never cease?”

“Has John informed you where you’re traveling to?”

“All he’s informed me about is the fact that he’s in charge.”

“John,” said Deaton again, as John shuffled his feet like a chastised schoolboy.

Stiles relished how Deaton put John in his place. Being eleventy-million years old must give Deaton a seniority even John had to respect.

“For heaven’s sake, show Stiles the map.”

John pulled a folded map out of his back pocket—which was a minor miracle, because John’s jeans were so tight Stiles was astonished a map could fit into his back pocket, at all. “Here,” he said, unfolding the map on Deaton’s bureau.

Stiles immediately recognized what must be ley lines, drawn in red and spidering over the American mainland like arteries, and another line, sketched in blue, that traced the ley line branching northward, with crosses marking cities on that line. The first mark was Arcata. “What’s going on in Arcata?”

“Multiple disappearances,” Deaton replied, passing Stiles a notebook filled with names, locations and descriptions, “and a grisly murder in which a girl was found dismembered in the Arcata Community Forest.”

“It could be nothing,” John said, “but the disappearances match patterns associated with a vampire recruiting thralls.”

“And the grisly murder?”

“That could be a human perpetrator, based on what we find. Or it could be a rogue werewolf, an Omega without a pack, incapable of controlling itself on full moons. While the body was located after it had rotted, the estimated date of the murder coincided with a full moon.”

“Vampires _and_ werewolves attracted to the same small town? That kinda supernatural activity could be because of a Nemeton.” Hope swelled in Stiles’s chest, although he did feel sad for the innocent victims. It was a mixed feeling.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” John said, being the killjoy he was. “Increased supernatural activity _might_ indicate a Nemeton, but Nemetons are few and far between. My grandfather’s journal, from before he migrated from Poland to the United States, says that he unearthed only two Nemetons on the European continent… and both of them were defunct.”

Deaton agreed with John’s caution. “My contact in Arcata—whose identity I am, alas, sworn not to reveal—doesn’t foresee a Nemeton. But we don’t have the luxury of not exploring every possibility.”

“I got it, I got it. Optimism is a no-no. A pessimist can never be disappointed. Et cetera.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Deaton said, with such compassion that it was abruptly harder to deal with than John’s callousness. With John, Stiles was so busy being strong that he couldn’t let himself lean on John, couldn’t let himself seek solace. But it was so tempting to let Deaton pat him on the back and give him hot chocolate, to let himself cry in Deaton’s presence.

Stiles manfully resisted the urge to just _ask_ for the hug he hadn’t been given ever since he got here. That would be humiliating.

“You shouldn’t give up hope. Just… remember to balance that hope with a healthy dose of pragmatism.”

“Yeah,” said Stiles. “Don’t fret, Doc.”

“I have to ‘fret,’ Stiles. You’re only seventeen, and you’re embarking on a perilous journey.”

“I’ll be eighteen in three months,” Stiles said. “An adult. Adulting like a boss. Compared to John, I’ll be the superior adult.”

Deaton’s smile returned. “You will be.”

“Hey,” said John, and Deaton laughed softly.

“Be vigilant, you two,” Deaton said, as he walked them to the exit. “Call me if disaster strikes. I’ll hook you up with the nearest witch, until I can get there myself.”

“Thanks,” Stiles said, not letting on how emotional he was.

“So he thanks _you_ ,” John said dourly, and without further ado, they departed.

 

* * *

 

It was nostalgic, being in the Jeep, but John didn’t say much other than telling Stiles to zip it—despite Stiles not even having spoken, yet—and then setting up the GPS so it corresponded to the route on their map.

As per Deaton’s advice, they halted at the Walgreens just beyond the Beacon Hills boundary to get Adderall and clothes. Stiles ventured in by himself; John refused to leave the Jeep and said that Stiles could get whatever he fancied, as long as he made it quick. When Stiles paid with John’s credit card at the register, it was difficult not to feel like a kept boy with a sugar daddy. Stiles had grown up valuing the dignity of earning an honest wage, and he didn’t like relying on somebody else’s money, if he could help it.

But he couldn’t help it. This was a necessity. And snacks? Were even more of a necessity. John had packed bottles of water and strips of beef jerky, but that wouldn’t do, would it? Surely they required some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to keep them fueled, and some cheesy Doritos to make the simmering silence between them bearable. If Stiles could fill that silence with crunchy munching, he might be able to keep his trap shut, like John had said. Of course, the loud munching might infuriate John just as much, but… que será, será.

The psychic lady behind the pharmacy counter hadn’t made a peep, merely giving Deaton’s prescription a lingering perusal, and, upon supplying Stiles with his Adderall, wishing him luck. Stiles was rather let down, because he’d been expecting some bonafide psychic prophecies, but maybe Stiles’s future wasn’t readable, given that he was from another dimension, and didn’t have a temporal history in this timeline.

That was Stiles’s theory for the psychic’s reticence, anyhow. It was more encouraging than thinking she’d envisioned his agonizing demise and was too nice to depress him with the terrible news.

When he climbed into the Jeep with his bounty—clothes and medication and junk food—John didn’t enquire as to what Stiles had bought with his money, like Stiles _was_ a kept boy.

“I got us snacks,” Stiles announced, as John restarted the GPS before reversing out of the Walgreens parking lot.

“And I told you to be quiet.”

Yikes. Good thing John wasn’t participating in any beauty pageants, because he’d fail the personality quiz abysmally. Stiles snickered at the mental image of John wearing a sash over his hunting outfit. Miss Beacon Hills. Ha!

The vein popping in John’s temple warned Stiles that he should cease snickering, so he decided to use the Doritos as god intended, and stuff his craw with them until he couldn’t make any noises that weren’t Dorito noises. He fumbled about behind him, grabbing the Doritos from the back seat, and delighted in John’s blatant displeasure at the crinkly racket that ensued as Stiles opened the packet.

Heh. John said he didn’t hurt humans, but he must be itching to skin Stiles alive, at this moment. Stiles had no idea why that made him feel victorious, but it did.

Arcata was approximately five hours from Beacon Hills, so the Doritos ran out shortly after John’s tolerance did. Stiles bargained with John to at least switch on the radio and tune it to a decent station, or be subjected to Stiles’s stellar conversational skills for five unbearable hours.

They chose a motel on the outskirts of Arcata, a quaint B&B owned by an aging couple who cheerfully asked John whether he was planning on hunting in the nearby forest. John mustn’t be their only gun-toting customer, and as for Stiles, he had a jacket of John’s concealing the top half of his scrubs, which made him look less like an escapee from a hospital ward.

“It’s so lovely to see fathers and sons spend quality time together,” said the elderly woman warmly, handing them their keys. “Hunting holidays are wonderful for bonding.”

“Oh, you know how it is,” John said, and Stiles gawked at how pleasant and—and paternal he was. It was like an episode of _The Twilight Zone_. “Kids these days, they don’t learn about nature, about surviving out there in the elements. They’re locked in classrooms all day, like animals in cages. It’s unnatural, is what it is. I thought I’d get my boy outta school for a couple weeks and into the real world.”

“You betcha,” said the husband, clearly a hunting enthusiast himself, given the elk’s horns mounted in the lobby. His accent was a southerner’s, which meant he wasn’t originally from Arcata. “If y’all need us, just ring up reception and ask for us. I’m Freddie, and the missus is Bertha. The food, Bertha cooks. I do the cleaning. If you run out of toilet rolls or towels, ask for me, and if you’re hankering for French toast or coffee to be brought to you in the mornings, ask for Bertha. The kitchen closes at ten for breakfast. We don’t cook lunch and dinner, but there’re plenty of businesses who deliver to us—pizza, Chinese, you name it. You’ll find the pamphlets in your room.”

“Much appreciated,” John said, and then he and Stiles carried their bags with them to their room—which, praise the lord, had two separate single beds.

There wasn’t much space, otherwise. The room was tiny, neat and aggressively feminine, from the floral wallpaper to the floral bedsheets to the floral curtains, and the vase of plastic flowers on the coffee table. Bertha must’ve been the chief decorator, because lacy curtains with daises on ’em couldn’t be Freddie’s thing. Not that Stiles was sexist, but…

John was busy lining the windows and the door with salt, to prevent any nasties from invading their temporary lodgings.

“Won’t Bertha be peeved at the salt?”

“We’ll hang the Do Not Disturb sign on our doorknob throughout our stay,” John said. “Don’t smear the salt or break the perimeter when you’re entering or leaving the room.”

“Gotcha.”

When he was done salting, John fished a ratty, much-used shirt out of his trunk. “Change into your new clothes,” he said to Stiles. “We’ll go to the city center, after that.”

“Why’re you changing, though?”

“We’re posing as civilians, since we’re in an inhabited town. I’ll get back into hunting gear before a hunt, or when we’re on the road between destinations.”

“Being on the road is dangerous?”

“Lonely interstate highways are rich pickings for creatures that feast on human flesh. All it takes is a punctured tyre, and you’re a sitting duck.”

“I’m so reassured,” said Stiles. “Not.” He unzipped his knapsack, taking out a T-shirt with Wile-E-Coyote on it, and a pair of generic blue jeans. He wriggled out of his scrub-pants and hopped into his jeans, but before changing his shirt, he caught sight of John, and did a double-take.

John had _abs_.

Like, actual abs. A six-pack, no less. It made Stiles uncomfortable, because his dad was supposed to be reasonably fit but pudgy around the middle, softened with age and desk-work, not ripped like some kind of goddamn war machine subjected to hours of grueling training. Hugging Dad was always comfortable, but hugging this fellow would be like hugging a rock.

Then again, this wasn’t his dad. And Stiles wouldn’t be hugging him. It still made Stiles feel woefully inadequate, that a middle-aged dude had more defined pecs than he did.

“Unfair,” Stiles muttered, reaching for the hem of his top and taking it off self-consciously, that same peculiar discomfort making him wish for some privacy, even if it was ridiculous to crave privacy after years of playing lacrosse and being seen naked by other teammates in the locker room.

He stopped with a jolt when when he caught John assessing him, in return. “What?” he demanded.

“You’re smooth,” John said, in a tone that could as easily be disdain as wonder. “Unmarked. Like a newborn. I should never have brought you along; you’re a fucking child.” John’s lip curled, and yep, definite disdain now. “Was your daddy so protective of you, then? Did he keep you safe from the bad guys?”

Stiles scowled. “Bad guys like you? Absolutely. My dad did right by me, okay? Don’t diss him just because you have an inferiority complex.”

“What inferiority complex?”

“My dad’s clearly the better man.”

It was John’s turn to scowl. “I’m risking my life to save the country from monsters.”

“So’s he, from human monsters. But he doesn’t whine about it. Also, you’re clearly jealous that he had me, all these years, while you had nothing.”

John narrowed his eyes. “I had my rage.”

“Wow. Impressive. Rage, instead of a living, breathing son that gives a shit about you and worries about you and hugs you on a daily basis.” Perhaps it was cruel, bringing up the loss of John’s son, but Stiles was too pissed off to care.

“He coddled you,” John sneered, “when he should’ve toughened you up to confront reality. That isn’t responsible parenting.”

“Yeah? And what would your oh-so-brilliant parenting involve? Using me as target practice?”

“I would teach you patience,” John growled, stepping forward. “The patience to scope out a site and lie in wait for your prey.” Another step. “I would teach you how to fight, and how to kill.” John took hold of Stiles’s wrist, wrapping around it like a vise. “I would teach you discipline.”

Stiles didn’t shrink back. He lifted his chin defiantly, in spite of John’s hulking form dwarfing his in ways Dad’s had never done, not least because Dad would never hurt him. John had no such scruples. “Lemme guess,” Stiles said. “You’d beat your lessons into me, if you had to.”

“You’re too stubborn for normal lessons.”

Stiles snorted. “Me? Stubborn? Looked in the mirror, lately?”

John paused, as if considering the point, before conceding it. “Maybe you could have been my son, after all.”

Stiles’s heart did... _something_ , but Stiles wasn’t sure if it was a leap or a twist. Or some sort of sprain from pounding too hard. He became suddenly and overwhelmingly aware of John’s bulky, shirtless proximity, and the awareness was like a flush, all over, a spike in his body temperature.

He finally gave in and stumbled back, freeing his hand and rescuing his store-bought tee from the carpet, where it had fallen. He yanked it on as hastily as he could, to hide himself, to shield himself from that all-seeing gaze, sharp as a paring knife.

“Look at you,” John said, “so starved for acceptance that the slightest bit of it makes you blush. It’s pathetic.”

“I’m not—”

“You’d beg for it, wouldn’t you? For a word of praise?”

Stiles went even hotter, but he was almost certain it was anger, this time. “What—first of all, what the heck is _wrong_ with you, and secondly, can you make up your mind about whether to sound disgusted or speculative? Because being both simultaneously is severely fucked up, man. Even for you.”

John grunted. “You don’t have the market cornered on fucked up, kid.”

“Don’t call me a... kid,” Stiles trailed off, as he saw the condition John’s back was in. Yes, the front of John’s torso had its fair share of souvenirs from occasional nicks and scrapes, from misadventures with fangs and claws—but John’s back was a mountain of scars, a muscular expanse on which knots of scar tissue surrounded deep, pitted gouges that must’ve been caused by bullets.

Transfixed by unwilling sympathy, Stiles touched one of those scars, as lightly as if it were still a wound.

John froze, and Stiles snatched his fingers back, face flaming red. “Do—do they hurt?”

John looked at him like he was a moron. “I’m not a werewolf or a vampire, Stiles. Humans never heal fully.”

“So they do hurt.”

John shrugged. “When it rains. When I don’t stretch properly before a hunt. When I bite off more than I can chew.”

“That last thing must happen very, very often.”

“For someone who doesn’t know me at all, you know me pretty well.”

“That’s because your death wish is practically visible from Mars,” Stiles said flatly. “Those scars on your back... It’s like you’ve been trying to get yourself killed. For _years_. It’s probably the longest suicide attempt in history.”

John didn’t even bother denying it. “And why do you care?”

Stiles spluttered. “I don’t!” he said, although he felt sick and betrayed and somehow even angrier than before, as if that were possible. “Go ahead and die if you want to, I don’t give a crap. Just put a shirt on before you blind me with your idiocy.”

John’s lips thinned. “Scars too ugly for your delicate sensibilities?”

“No, you whack-job. I just don’t like being reminded that the dude I’m on a road trip with would as soon drive the car into a bloody ditch.” He stomped over to the door, because if he stayed in here with this lunatic, he’d snap. “I’m getting dinner for myself. For you, too, since apparently you’d starve yourself into an early grave if you could.”

Stiles edged past the salt and left.

 

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve made the legal drinking age eighteen.

* * *

 

It was eight in the morning and Stiles was blearily munching the most gloriously cheesy grilled sandwich in the world—Bertha was a _goddess_ —when John took a small but incredibly thick Bible out of his knapsack and dumped it on the coffee table, right under Stiles’s nose.

“Read,” John said.

“Um,” Stiles swallowed a string of cheese, “I’m not really the pious type? Didn’t peg you as pious, either.”

John huffed, crossing his arms. His annoyingly muscled arms. Did he have to wear tank-tops in the mornings? It was obscene. “Open it.”

Stiles opened the Bible one-handed, because he wasn’t relinquishing his cheese sandwich in favor of a Bible. Doing so would be forsaking Bertha and accepting a false god. He did, however, avoid getting too much grease on the Bible’s cover. He had manners.

His eyes bugged out upon seeing that the Bible’s frontispiece contained a miniature woodcut of a goat with a giant penis. A giant, thorny penis. “Wha—” 

“It’s a pocket bestiary.”

“There’re pocket bestiaries as well as pocket Bibles?”

John ignored him. “We’re starting with the disappearances. The potential vampire thralls.” He nodded at the book. “Flip to page 363, the chapter on feeding. The third paragraph’s about vampire feeding habits.”

“You have the contents memorized down to the fucking paragraph?”

“I’ve been consulting this bestiary since I inherited it from my grandmother. I have it memorized, cover to cover.”

“Dang. You aren’t just a testosterone-laden jock with balls for brains.”

John quirked an eyebrow, and said, utterly without judgment: “And you’re just a queer kid with balls on his brains.”

Stiles almost hacked up the half-sandwich he’d eaten, aghast. “How did you—not that I—it took Dad months after I came out as bi to wrap his head around it. And you just… get it? Like that?”

“I ain’t your dad, kid, as I’m getting tired of reminding you. And you’re obvious.”

“Obvious, how?” Stiles’s ever-present internal security system kicked in. “Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.”

John gestured at the bestiary and restated: “Read.”

Stiles read. As he got to the conclusion of the section on vampire thralls, the folks that vampires took captive as live blood-banks, he was gaping again. According to the bestiary, when vampires bit their victims, they injected a toxin into the thralls’ bodies, a toxin that acted as an aphrodisiac and a narcotic, inducing both intense arousal and mental confusion. 

_The feed culminates in sexual climax for the thrall, freeing the thrall from the toxin, but only temporarily and only until the subsequent feed. Gradually, the thrall develops an addiction to the toxin, the dependency worsening over several feeds, until the thrall loses all capacity for independent thought and action, living only to serve the vampire’s appetites, be they carnal or otherwise._

“Jesus H.,” Stiles marveled, contradicting his claim to impiety. “This is some next level _Twilight_ shit.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Nothing you would comprehend, you philistine. Does this world even have _Twilight_?”

“I gather it isn’t a time of day,” John said dryly.

“It’s a pop culture phenomenon. Among the true horrors of the twenty-first century. So.” Stiles shut the book. “How are we gonna do this? I’ll be the bait.”

John glared at him. “No. I get that you’re an imbecile, but _no_.”

“Dude. If you’re hunting a beast of prey, you gotta have bait. Oldest hunting technique there is. Bear-bait works. Fish-bait works. I’ll be the vamp-bait.”

“No. You. Won’t.”

“What, will _you_ pose as an aspiring thrall? You, with the mug like an axe-murderer’s? I’m young and cute and, and clueless enough to do the whole vampires-are-so-cool-please-bite-me schtick. Not that I’ll allow a vamp to bite me,” Stiles said hurriedly, when John’s glare became downright radioactive. “I’ll just. Lure a vamp into an alley behind a bar? An alley where you’ll be waiting with a stake the size of a dinosaur’s tooth?”

John’s glare became distinctly speculative. “Why do you suspect a vampire would be at a bar?”

“Simple logic.” Stiles grinned. “All the victims so far have been young. Many of them just over the drinking age. And most of the disappearances were on Friday or Saturday nights. Where else do most youngsters gather? At night? On weekends? Bars, that’s what. Plus, they’re inebriated, which makes ’em easy pickings. It’s like, if you’re hunting a lion, you have to go to the waterhole where the lion does _his_ hunting, right?”

John’s expression was... It was the constipated love-child of approval and the determination to never approve of anything Stiles said or did, ever.

“C’mon. Say I’m smart. Say you’re amazed by my prodigious insight.”

“Prodigious?” John’s mouth twitched. Briefly. “Did you learn that for your SATs?”

“Aw, was that a smile? That was totally a smile! You’re proud of me!”

“I’m fed up with you.”

“Well, it’ll be your job to ensure the vampire doesn’t get fed up with _me_. Literally.”

“Still not buyin’ it,” John said, and just—dropped into a push-up. And another. And another.

Stiles was momentarily distracted from his sandwich. He had to count how many push-ups John did. He just had to, in the vain hope that it would provide him with an objective measure of just how much of a Rambo wannabe John was.

Stiles gave up at thirty, because _he_ couldn’t do that many push-ups, and comparing himself to Hercules over there was becoming terminally depressing. That, and John was sweating like a horse, gleaming rivulets tracing paths down his back, and—

Oh. So that was why. With the tank-top. Sweat. It was a thing. That happened. After strenuous activi—after exercise.

Stiles swung his gaze back to the bestiary and resumed nattering about all the vampire-hunting scenarios he could conceive of, returning every three scenarios or so to extrapolate on his excellent masterplan about going undercover as a honeytrap. Bloodtrap. The correct phraseology was bloodtrap.

When John finished his push-ups after approximately a million years, he grunted about taking a shower and vanished into the bathroom.

Stiles stared at the drops of sweat on the floorboards where John had been exercising.

Ugh. Disgusting. Poor Bertha would have to clean that. Didn’t John have any consideration for old ladies with arthritis? Stiles considered cleaning the sweat himself, but he couldn’t bring himself to wipe it with his shirt and have it _on his shirt_ , ew, and it wasn’t like he could utilize the curtains. Or the adorable pink bedsheets printed with Heidi-like girls plucking flowers.

These were the moral dilemmas John had brought into Stiles’s life. Le sigh.

John emerged from the shower dripping even more, despite being mostly dressed, because he was in the midst of energetically toweling his hair dry. Like a huge dog shaking itself dry, uncaring of the resulting splatter. A huge, vicious dog. Maybe a Doberman.

Stiles was on the verge of admonishing the barbarian when John said: “You’ve got a point. I haven’t hunted with a partner, before. That changes the game. Gives me new ways to hunt.”

Huh?

“P-partner?” Stiles squeaked. Was John beginning to respect him? That couldn’t be. John probably meant “sidekick,” and just wasn’t into comics enough to be acquainted with the term. Stiles told himself that was a relief; at least John wouldn’t put him in Robin-panties. Those were disturbing.

Unexpectedly, after reflecting on it in the shower, John had agreed to the plan—but only as long as Stiles promised to meet the vamp in that alley but didn’t fulfill his promise, and as long as John would be in the bar with them, watching, and would silently stalk the vamp into the alley afterward. Basically, under no condition was Stiles to endanger himself by being alone with a vampire.

Stiles could even delude himself that John gave a crap about him.

Nah. John was only honoring his pledge to Deaton. He’d said so, hadn’t he?

Not that it mattered. The plan would proceed.

Of course, like any plan involving Stiles, it quickly went haywire.

This was how.

 

* * *

 

At the outset, the mission appeared to be on-track. John had gone out around midday to visit the local fake ID pitstop, because a) Stiles couldn’t get into a bar without a fake ID, and b) John had rung Deaton up for the details of the closest semi-professional, hunter-friendly counterfeiter. When John got back, he had an extremely realistic ID for Stiles, since he’d photographed Stiles with his mobile phone to pass Stiles’s likeness on to the counterfeiter.

“This is illegal as all heck,” Stiles said, admiring his flawless ID before inserting it into the wallet John had purchased for him. He’d be eighteen if any bouncer checked his ID. Not seventeen. “My dad would be all up in that joint.”

John just waved a wad of notes at him. “Here’s your cash. You won’t be a credible patron of a bar if you don’t buy yourself drinks.”

Stiles took the money with apprehension. “Did you withdraw all this from an ATM? You couldn’t be traced by the authorities, could you?”

“No,” John replied. “We hunters have procedures to prevent that. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t worry, he says,” Stiles groused. “After trying to get himself shot for two frickin’ decades.”

John lugged him out of the room by the elbow. Stiles got deposited in the passenger’s seat of the Jeep, and they were off.

They drove to Utopia, a bar that a Google search had revealed was popular with college students and to which three of the recent disappearances were linked, as in, those who’d disappeared had frequented the bar. That said, there were other bars they frequented, too, albeit not as much, so there may not be a connection.

John had described typical vampire traits to make spotting a vamp easier: yes, they were pasty; no, they didn’t shun garlic or crosses; yes, they were unnaturally beautiful; yes, they would go for everybody that propositioned them, uncaring of gender or sex. A feed was a feed.

Stiles was aware that he wasn’t a hottie, but he figured that being a living blood-bottle with a charming personality would stand him in good stead.

John parked the car a distance off and got out before Stiles did, heading to Utopia on foot, so that they weren’t observed entering together. Fifteen minutes later, an equally frightened and excited Stiles hiked to the bar. When he entered, the place was so ill-lit and crowded it took him ages to espy John’s broad-shouldered, leather-jacketed shape cradling a whiskey adjacent to a potted plant.

Stiles didn’t permit his attention to settle on John; that would expose them as accomplices. He squinted at the bar’s clientele through the noisy, cigarette-hazy gloom, and casually joined the cluster of people around the busy bartender.

He had been wondering how many hours the stakeout would be, and if he could avoid social interaction while looking fetching—how was that even doable?—but it literally took him three seconds into the drink he was not-sipping to spot the vampire.

Tall. Seductive. Gorgeous. _Wicked_.

Damn. Yeah, vamps were deadly carnivores, but for a while there, before Stiles’s higher functions came online and derailed the hormone train chugging happily to his gonads, his heart-rate _spiked_. And not with terror.

The vampire glanced at him. Surveyed him with a bored appreciativeness. And then… glanced away. At a stunning-but-tipsy young woman in a short red dress. With her lovely curves and scarlet dress, she was like a wineglass full of wine. Or a chalice full of blood.

Okay. So the vamp had identified Stiles because of the variation in his heartbeat, which vampiric senses, like werewolf senses, were primed to detect. But the vamp hadn’t deemed him more appealing than the girl Stiles couldn’t let the vamp capture tonight. He wouldn’t have another thrall on his conscience.

He’d have to proposition the vamp, himself. It may even help that he was still blushing.

Stiles flashed at John out of the corner of his eye—scowling, as if Stiles’s entirely justified attraction to a person of flabbergasting beauty offended him—and decided to pay no heed to John’s existence. The vamp would pick up on it if Stiles’s focus was divided.

But how could Stiles out-sexy that girl? Or, uh, anyone?

A shard of glass on the ground glittered in the light, inches from a partly-shattered beer bottle, and suddenly, Stiles knew how.

It was halfway between him and the vamp. Perfect.

Stiles had a habit of flailing. All he had to do was flail as nature intended.

He abandoned his drink and walked toward the vamp, adrenaline sparking up his spine.

It was now or never.

Stiles “accidentally” collided with a man and tumbled to the floor in a tangle of limbs, catching himself on his hands, one of which “coincidentally” landed on the fallen shard. He hissed, blood welling from the cut, pressing it to his lips as he got up.

“Sorry,” he said to the guy he’d bumped into, who cursed at him and moved on.

Stiles licked along the line of his wrist, chasing the blood trickling down it. As he tasted it, coppery and rich, he saw the vampire looking at him from across the bar, pupils blown.

As if embarrassed by his clumsiness, Stiles lowered his eyelashes, and when he raised them again, the vamp was _right there_ , his regard solely on Stiles, girl forgotten. His handsome, uncannily symmetrical face was unmistakably shark-like.

“Pardon me,” the vamp said, his refined request at odds with the ripped jeans molding themselves to his package. Not that Stiles was ogling his package. “Use this.”

Use his dick? “Er?” asked Stiles, whose complexion must resemble that of the healthiest organically-grown tomato in Arcata’s weekly farmers’ market. Then he noticed the handkerchief the vamp was presenting to him, ostensibly for Stiles to stanch his bleeding with. “Oh. Thanks. But won’t it get stained?”

“It isn’t mine,” the vamp said, and Stiles giggled nervously at the yellow tulips embroidered on the handkerchief.

“Assuming that would’ve been terribly heteronormative of me, though. Uh. Sorry about. About that display of epic awkwardness. I’ve been drinking too much to be coordinated.”

The vamp’s nostrils flared. “No, you haven’t.”

Oops. Stiles couldn’t deceive a vamp with lies, especially about smellable substances like alcohol. “Lemme keep my dignity, would ya? I’ll just pretend the reason for my being a loser is drunkenness rather than me-ness.”

“Me-ness,” the vampire echoed, amused. “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’m Karl.”

“Hi, Karl. I’m St—Stonn.” Stiles winced. Great. He’d named himself after a Star Trek character. The Vulcan Spock’s fiancée dumped him for. And why was Stiles persisting in lying to a vampire it was fruitless to lie to?

Karl mustn’t be familiar with Star Trek—his classic Jane Austen decorum and weirdly intense aura indicated he was still into the Victorian Gothic aesthetic and hadn’t caught up with modern sci-fi—so he didn’t comment on the name. But he _also_ didn’t comment on the lie, choosing to smirk instead, and—

Cripes. Karl must be interpreting Stiles lying about his name as Stiles angling for an anonymous one-night stand, a one-night stand with a stranger Stiles had no interest in confiding his real name to. It didn’t escape Stiles that Karl’s pupils were blown again, and fixed on the now-bloodied handkerchief Stiles had tied around his hand.

“I should buy you another drink,” Karl said, “or maybe I should…” Karl inhaled savoringly, as if on the brink of saying, _drink you_. “…take you out back for a while. Get us some fresh air.”

This. This was it.

Karl had a deliciously evil allure, and perhaps Stiles was already partially under the sway of Karl’s pheromones, but it was too late to backpedal. Besides, this was the mission. If Stiles rebuffed Karl, Karl would just go and feed on that girl. John had banned Stiles from going anywhere with the vamp, but in this situation, Stiles couldn’t say no. Not if it led to sacrificing an innocent.

Stiles tried to telepathically project “Synchronize Swatches” in John’s general direction, but he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded. John would doubtlessly be the hardass Vulcan with the impenetrable mental shields. And why was Stiles so obsessed with Vulcans, tonight? Possibly because Vulcans symbolized control, and control was what Stiles lacked.

Swell. In addition to panicking, he was psychoanalyzing his own panic. That didn’t bode well.

He was gonna have to sneak out of a bar for a quickie with a vampire. A quickie John would hopefully interrupt before Stiles got skewered—by fang or by dick.

Stiles wasn’t pious, but he sent up a prayer to God, anyway. Just in case He was listening.

 

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that this chapter contains non-con elements. The story’s rating has also been upped to “Explicit.”

* * *

 

The “fresh air” they were allegedly going out back for turned out to be more rotten than fresh, flavored by the stench of garbage and puke. If Karl, a vampire with super-senses, could tolerate this fetid pit, then he must be very, very hungry.

Or maybe Stiles was just very, very tasty. The cut on his hand wasn’t oozing anymore, but that blood-soaked hanky must be the equivalent of a gigantic highway billboard urging peckish vampires to kindly travel just another nine miles to Stiles’s jugular. Stiles could even imagine what the billboard’s tagline would be: THERE’S MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM!

If Stiles survived this encounter, he might go on to have a successful career in advertising.

“Eep!” said Stiles, as Karl all but slammed him into the grimy brick wall behind the bar. “Ease up, buddy. We’ve got ti—”

“I am weary,” Karl snarled, “of having _time_. Lately, I fear it is all I have.”

Before Stiles could suggest that Karl get counseling from a qualified psychologist for all that existential angst, Karl had yanked Stiles’s head back by the hair and had buried his nose in Stiles’s clavicle. Stiles’s very naked clavicle, because Karl had just ripped the collar of his T-shirt. With his teeth.

Hell.

Stiles’s synapses made an executive decision to go off all at once. And at the center of that lightning storm was John’s name, on repeat, like a mantra. _John. John, save me. John, you fucker, if you don’t show up in the next 0.02 seconds… John. Save me. John. C’mon. John._

“They’re all afraid, by now, but not this afraid. It’s like you know what I’m going to do to you.” Karl held Stiles’s cheekbones in a bruising grip. “Is there a secret you ought to be sharing with me, pet?”

Karl’s previously elegant features had become monstrous, transformed by a starvation so savage that it shook Stiles to his core. He began struggling with every ounce of his strength, but it was about as effective as a kitten named David fighting against the actual, non-kitten Goliath. Karl had him immobilized.

Resistance was most definitely futile. Stiles hated it when the Borg were right.

“No,” Stiles said uselessly, as Karl’s teeth lengthened into fangs. “No, don’t…”

But it was to no avail. Those fangs scraped over the frantic bobbing of his Adam’s apple, and then—

Then, they were in.

Stiles scarcely had a moment to process it: the tearing, _punishing_ pain, followed by a rapidly-spreading numbness that numbed his flesh and his soul, until his flesh was a block of amber and his soul a fly trapped within it, motionless.

The paralysis was worse than the pain. It was like death, or a glimpse of what death could be.

And it had only been, what, four minutes since they’d snuck out of the bar? Five? Stiles had aimed to divert Karl from feeding while John fought against the crowd to exit the bar and positioned himself downwind of the vampire before launching an attack, but Stiles’s delay tactics had failed. It wasn’t John’s fault that Stiles had deviated from their plan. Or that Stiles had maddened an erstwhile composed vampire with bloodlust because of a silly stunt.

If Karl couldn’t restrain himself as he would with a prospective thrall, and drank until Stiles was empty, he’d kill Stiles.

At least Stiles had spared that girl from this. John would destroy Karl before the bastard fed on anyone else.

Stiles braced for the inevitable.

That was when a whistling noise arrowed toward them. A loud thunk hit Karl—presumably in the back, straight through the ribcage and into the chest—because before Karl could even retract his fangs, he’d been reduced to ash. It drifted slowly downward, sooty and rancid.

The weight against Stiles disappeared. Unsupported, he slid down the wall, knees buckling.

It was over.

Stiles’s paralysis melted off him like a shell of ice, leaving Stiles swelteringly  _hot_ , electricity zinging through him and blistering him from the inside out. Perspiration sprung up all over him, and he blinked incredulously at the pile of dust and clothing that was Karl.

An immortal, obliterated. Just like that. The stake that had slain Karl rested atop his ruins, smoking like a gun.

Boots thudded down the alley, skidding in their haste. Stiles drunkenly lolled his head upright. John was crouching before him.

“Kid. You alive?” John grabbed him by the shoulders. “You aren’t bleeding from where the fangs were, which means we got him in the injection phase, before he started actively drinking from you; he was still injecting you with the toxin. Remember the toxin?”

Stiles didn’t remember jack shit. The was a boiling heat in him, bubbling up in gasps that fogged as they escaped him. There was a gnawing in his stomach of mingled nausea and hunger, and he heaved as if he had to vomit, but his retching was dry.

His mind was a nightmare-fugue, like a dream of being smothered. Periodic blanks punctuated his agitation. He couldn’t even recall what had transpired between him slumping into John’s embrace and being bundled into the Jeep.

“Hang in there,” John said, keying the ignition and footing the accelerator, veering onto the road. The tires screeched. “I’ll drive you to the motel, where civilians won’t see us, and drain you of the poison. It won’t injure you; it’ll just incapacitate you for a while. So don’t be scared. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

Scared? Stiles wasn’t scared. He was _desperate._ But he couldn’t talk, couldn’t tell John off for being a patronizing sonovabitch. Everything was swimming around him—city lights, the phosphorous-blue numbers on the dashboard—and every swerve of the speeding car seemed like it was shifting all his organs to the opposite side.

He was a wreck by the time they reached the motel, panting, squirming, frenzied. There was an acid eating away at him, an anguish yearning to be soothed, a dumb, animal desire to be tamed, to be taken care of, because he couldn’t handle this himself. He couldn’t. He was exhausted, falling to pieces, but his muscles kept twitching as if jolts of static were being shot through them.

“Hey. Hey, we’re there,” John said, unlocking their room and helping Stiles indoors, and he’d barely even kicked the door shut behind them when Stiles found himself clutching the lapels of John’s jacket in his fists, moaning, choking, his oxygen running out until his lungs ached with its loss.

He had been set alight and left to perish. An agony of longing wracked through him, a longing to be owned, to be claimed, for this to be over, please, please, _please_.

“P-Please,” he stuttered, not comprehending what it was that would end his torment. John was holding him up against the door and tilting Stiles’s chin up to study the punctures on his throat, and the mere pressure-points of John’s fingertips on his jaw had him keening.

“Gotta get the poison out,” John muttered, meaningless to Stiles, but then John was sealing his lips over the bites, sucking powerfully, and Stiles banged his skull against the nearby windowsill because he’d listed sideways, in a dizzying rush of ecstasy that almost had him blacking out.

John sucked and spat, sucked and spat, and the bites knitted closed as they were drained. Stiles’s puncture-wounds repaired themselves in minute, tangible tugs, like stitches, and while that quenched the fire on the surface, it didn’t relieve the venomous blaze of it within him, barbed wire twisting in his very veins. 

The final puncture healed, and the searing swipe of John’s tongue along his neck sent shock sizzling through Stiles. He jerked like a hanged man on a noose.

His cock let out a blurt of pre-come, and oh, was he hard? Stiles registered vaguely that he was thrusting against John, a mindless, ceaseless grinding.

“Christ, you’re—” John’s whisper cut off on a groan. “Stiles. Stiles, do you understand me? The poison’s still in you. It’s gotten deep into your system. It won’t be out of you until you orgasm for your,” John paused, then continued, inexplicably hoarse, “your master.”

Stiles opened his eyes, his vision blurred by tears. He saw John looking at him with a darkness that resembled Karl’s dangerous thirst, but the sight of John’s face was also somehow safe, and that combination of safety and danger did _things_ to Stiles. His hips lurched and his brain flatlined. There was a terror in him, somewhere, like an internal hemorrhage invisible from the outside. It warned him that something was wrong, but he couldn’t hear it above the roar of his own pulse, couldn’t make sense of it, couldn’t _bear_ to make sense of it.

“Fuck,” John said, breathing heavily, like he was the one hopped up on vampire pheromones. Who knew? They might be contagious. “You’re so...”

The rasp of John’s voice made Stiles’s skin itch and burn, as if it were brushing against him, all over, sandpaper against the softest parts of him until he wept at the rough-sharp friction of it. But it was just a voice. How could it—what was happening to him—

“Legs apart,” John commanded, but there was a rawness to the command that leant it the urgency of a plea.

Stiles responded instantly, the vampire toxin designed to turn him into a submissive thrall working its magic. John cupped Stiles’s crotch, kneading it through his jeans, and Stiles _screamed_.

“Hush,” said John. Maybe the word was meant to be reassuring, but it had the ferocity of a threat, and Stiles whimpered. “I’m not hurting you. I won’t hurt you.”

What a fucking lie. Stiles hurt everywhere.

“Come on, now. Give it up. Give it up like the sweet little thing you are…”

And Stiles did, unable not to, a surge of what felt like liquid electricity flooding his mouth with saliva and his nerves with bliss and his underwear with come, semen just abruptly filling it, sloppy and sudden, the damp cotton clinging to his softening, over-sensitized cock.

Aftershocks raced through Stiles in violent shudders, his eyelids fluttering at the force of them. He dimly realized that John was still pressed against him, murmuring reassurances into Stiles’s ear, and that—that John had an erection, too.

Before Stiles’s mind cleared and reminded him that this wasn’t just another body against his, he instinctively touched John back.

But it did clear, and the vague wrongness he’d perceived before came rearing up to consume him. Stiles shoved John away, disgust causing bile to rise up in him.

God, this was… This had been his first time.

John just stared at Stiles as if he couldn’t fathom why Stiles wasn’t still in his arms, and Stiles’s heart twisted with a sickening yearning, because this was apparently what it took to get a hug, around here.

“Bet you liked that,” Stiles said, the accusation dragged out of him like crushed glass, bloodying him on its way out. He pointed shakily at the tent in John’s pants, ashamed of the wet patch on his own. “Bet you liked having me at your mercy, for a change. Did it occur to you that I’d regret this when it was over? That I’d rather die than lose my virginity to a man with my father’s face?”

“Your—” John straightened, sobering swiftly, but he didn’t even have the grace to feign guilt. “I saved your life. Virginity or not, _I saved your life_. I did what had to be done. You owe me your gratitude.”

“Gratitude? Yeah, like it was just about saving my life. Like you didn’t get off on it.”

“One,” said John, with a steely sort of calm, and Stiles couldn’t believe he still had that erection. What, did just being around Stiles do it for him, now? “I didn’t expect to react as I did. Two, can you blame me?” He took a step toward Stiles, alarmingly predatory, and Stiles shrank back, hating the flame of _want_ that flickered to life in him, hotter than his anger. “Do you have any idea what you were like, writhing against me, looking at me as if you belonged to me?”

“Okay, stop right there. I was supposed to belong to Karl.” At the narrowing of John’s eyes, Stiles laughed. Raggedly. “What, all possessive now that you’ve got a boner? How _noble_. Don’t forget, it was the toxin making me look like that.”

John had halted in his tracks, but he still had the gall to state, with a certainty he hadn’t any right to: “No. It wasn’t. Not completely. Or you wouldn’t still be looking at me like that.”

“Like I despise you?”

“Like you need me to put you back together.”

Stiles hitched a sob. “It’s just screwing with me, that you—that you have the same face as my dad, the same face as the last person who ever really gave a damn about me. The last person who said they loved me.”

“But I don’t have the same face as him. Do I? Not to you, and not for a while. Admit it.”

It was true. It was _true_ , damn it, because Stiles had noted how different John was even when they’d met near that godforsaken Nemeton, had noted the leanness and harshness of John’s face, simultaneously identical to Dad’s and starkly dissimilar to it, angular and jagged as if it had been carved from stone, no give in it, no gentleness, no affection.

And yet there had been a quality approaching gentleness in John when he’d called Stiles “sweet,” when he’d coaxed Stiles to come, and as much as it humiliated Stiles that he’d obeyed like a trained dog, it also made him feel—

Nothing. It made him feel _nothing_.

He stumbled to the bathroom, acutely conscious of how cold and gross the mess in his underpants was becoming, and how badly he had to get to the shelter of the shower before he just up and started crying like a child in front of the man who wasn’t his father. Who would never be his father, no matter how much Stiles wished he were, and who had now robbed Stiles of that, as well, the ability to wish that this John Stilinski was Sheriff Stilinski, the stupid hope that Stiles would wake up tomorrow and that it would be Dad sitting by his bedside, his broad palm warm on Stiles’s forehead, saying: _The fever’s broken, kiddo_.

Nobody might ever say that to him again. Least of all this brute masquerading as John Stilinski, who was obviously so far from considering a Stiles his son that he was picturing Stiles as his—

His what? His toy? His very own catamite? If so, he was as vile as Karl. And if Stiles had heard a rock-steady protectiveness in John’s tone when John had—when he’d said that he wouldn’t hurt Stiles—then surely it was just wishful thinking.

Not that Stiles was wishing for anything. After all, John _had_ hurt him. He had.

Stiles managed to get into the bathroom, out of his sticky underwear and torn T-shirt, and under the shower’s relentless deluge before it struck him that he hadn’t locked the bathroom. Like he should have. Like anybody with a survival instinct would have.

He refused to think about why he hadn’t. And, as he curled up on the tiled floor of the shower and cried as the water beat down on him, he didn’t think about why John didn’t just barge in and take what he wanted.

Stiles didn’t think, at all.

 

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Like my writing? Want updates and sneak previews? Follow me on [Tumblr](http://saucefactory.tumblr.com/)!


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